They Granted Her 100 Wishes And Forgot I Was Dying Too novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Witness

At dawn the lake was white with mist, and Tiernan was asleep sitting up against a dock post with my blanket over both of us.

I watched his face for a while.

He looked younger asleep, and a little defeated.

When his eyes opened, he found me looking.

"Morning," I said. "You said yes twice last night."

"I know what I said."

"I wrote the rule. You broke it."

"You asked me to."

"I know." I tugged the blanket higher. "I'm going to throw it at you anyway, every chance I get. You witness. You never grant."

He smiled, and then the smile stopped.

"There's a reason I follow it," he said.

"Tell me."

"Not on a dock."

"Then where?"

He glanced toward the cabin, where nobody had stirred, and then at the boathouse at the end of the beach.

The boathouse smelled of cedar and old rope, and sunlight came in through the slats in thin bars.

He shut the door behind us, and then he leaned his back against it.

"My sister was Returned eight years ago," he said. "I was twenty-one."

I waited.

"She had a hundred days, like Cora. I was the clerk's runner at the Bureau that summer. I wrote her wishes down." His jaw worked. "On the ninetieth day, she asked me to stay with her until the end. Just me. Not the house. Me."

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'I log them, I don't grant them.'" He gave a short, awful laugh. "I thought I was being professional."

"Tiernan."

"She asked once more on the last night. I said I'd be at the door. I wasn't in the room." He looked at the floor. "At zero she was gone. They never tell you where. I've spent eight years in that office reading every file I'm allowed to read."

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